Well Peabody, you get your wish

It seems Samsung is going to give a player with the HQV chip another try. This one is more feature rich than the 1200, but its price is pretty close to the same.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=1369

Oh, and read the comments as well.

I gotta admit, the PS3 was my first thought as well unless maybe one has an old-school receiver/processor and wishes to remain analog.

Well my first thought was, why did it have to be Samsung. Most of the people that posted are PS3 and Sony fanboys and those soured on Samsung. The posters also gave me the impression they didn't know much about Blu-ray. Yes, there were those complaining about the price but even if the Samsung was $700.00 it would only be a midrange priced player. The ES, Elite, Denon and Marantz will all have players at higher prices, not to mention all the high end players when and if they ever get ramped up. I paid $450.00 for my last Denon DVD player $700.00 isn't nothing for a BR player if it has what I want. I'd rather pay $700.00 than $2k for the Marantz with the Realto. I feel the 1200 is a better unit than the S300 and I'm betting the 2500 will be better than Sony's 500 or 550. If they'd rather buy a Sony that doesn't perform as well that's their loss. Time will tell but I bet the 2500 is a hot item once the reviewers start raving about it and the tests show how much better the 2500 can do.

I am not thrilled with Samsung myself. I like my 1200 and I've gotten all the firmware updates for it. It plays BR discs fine. It is still quirky though and occasionally will freeze playing a regular DVD. My main beef is their lack of customer service. They have never answered a single email, I can't get the firmware updates to download properly (could be me), and I have gotten them to send me the firmware on disc but it usually takes a couple calls and the assistors aren't even aware of the most recent update posted on the website.

My next step is to upgrade to a more modern processor. My 1200 will hold me until I can see what comes out this fall. If the 2500 is the only one available under $1k with the HQV I will probably end up with one in order to get the Tru-HD and DTS-MA.

One of the local high end shops keeps telling me about 1.3 having problems when mixing brands, see any of this? I guess some of the HDMI communication isn't standard? The 1200 is 1.3 and it works with my Sony and Tosh fine, which are not 1.3. Maybe it's just 1.3 to 1.3 or I'm just lucky.

BTW - It's interesting that if Samsung lost so much on the 1200, which I don't think they did, that they would try this again. And, thanks for the info.

I'm sorry that this is so off topic, but I had a Samsung mini-dv camcorder once and it ended up a very expensive paper weight in a very short time. I guess I'm still bitter about that so I can't see spending $700.00 on a BR-player at all, especially a Samsung.

Interesting thread, but man Mr. P., you're throwing around some really BIG numbers. And I agree, Samsung doesn't come across as the be all - end all in the A/V world IMO.

That's a fact Jack! Or, in this case Rich. They're accurate though, look up the Denon 3800, the Marantz BD-8002 $1,995.00, I can't remember the model of the ES I was looking at but it was $1,200.00, Elite was $999.00. ES and Elite had the same Sigma chip as all the cheaper players, so to me that makes the Samsung 2500 at $700.00 with (estimated by the article) with HQV look like a decent deal.